8 ms·

I would argue in this narrow case - I would not point to nefarious undercurrents. Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors

I would argue in this narrow case - I would not point to nefarious undercurrents. Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors. Email, even in 2019, still extremely valuable. If you can get into people's email inbox, there's still quite high conversion rate - better than clicks/videos on a pure percentage basis. Even the author wants to reach out to people in a cold fashion. As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. Google's spam filter is a welcome addition. As a business owner, I'm continuously having to do things so I don't end up in spam. Less images, specific wording and the list goes on. I can't have it both ways. I would not be on Gmail if it was like yahoo. My goodness... my parent's inbox, on yahoo, makes me anxious.

the_pwner224 7y ago
> Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors. Email, even in 2019, still extremely valuable. Google's spam models freaking suck donkey dick. I use Fastmail but my university uses Google for email. A service we use (Piazza, class Q&A) sends notifications via email. Over the years I have gotten probably about 1k email notifications from them, and replied to a few of them too. Google has recently started marking about 5% of their notifications as spam. 95% of the notifications come through; 5% get rejected. There's no discernible logic to this. There are organizations and people within the university which have me on their mailing lists; with them too 90% of the emails get through but 5% get randomly marked as spam. And they're perfectly normal emails that Google just decides to move to spam. Even with people that I have had email conversations with, it just spams random stuff. Every couple of months I check my Fastmail spam folder just for the lolz of seeing what's in there. With Google I have to check spam every day or I'll miss important stuff. There are tons of people who have posted very similar experiences on HN. On this thread I just saw another person comment that Google's own emails go to spam - I've observed this too on my personal Gmail account which I occasionally check. The spam filters have a tough job, but other companies are succeeding at keeping all the spam out without a gigantic false positive rate. Google's filter is hilariously bad.
- boudin 7y ago
  Yeah, gmail is really not great. I host my own email but use gmail for work. I hate everything in gmail, from the UI to the lack of really simple way to filter thing (like sieve) and to the totally random behaviour like you described. In the end, I don't really read emails on gmail anymore because it's just a huge pain. My own server has a good reputation, but it meant setting up SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc.... Where it was the most painful was with microsoft email (I don't know the name of their service now, still live maybe). By default mails goes to spam, but really quickly they goes in limbo if people don't respond (on the smtp side the email is accepted but the recipient never see it, not even in spam). On new microsoft accounts I was always able to send a few emails in spam before it went into limbo. I ended up creating ~20 different accounts on their system (it was before they enforced giving a phone number) and had random discussions with myself for a while which was enough to build a reputation and not being put in spam anymore. I don't know if this behaviour was intended or not, I try to get in touch with someone from microsoft but couldn't find a way. Since then I do strongly advise not to use their system because that makes it really unreliable.
  - roblabla 7y ago
    I have exactly the same problem on my personal email server, ms silently drops my email! Their server replies with OK, but the email is nowhere to be found in the recipient’s inbox. Even if the conversation was initiated by the microsoft account and I merely reply to it, the email still disappears. I’ve got everything setup properly, all test websites come up green, and google receives my email just fine. SPF, DMARK, DKIM, PTR, HELO are all setup correctly. This isn’t an isolated problem either, the ms forums are filled with people reporting similar problems.
    - stiray 7y ago
      Same expirience here, but I must say it is becoming better since I have reverse resolve. Previously every mail went into spam. Regardless of SPF and DKIM.
    - rsync 7y ago
      "I have exactly the same problem on my personal email server, ms silently drops my email! Their server replies with OK, but the email is nowhere to be found in the recipient’s inbox." Slightly tangential ... I heard recently that "proper" in-line responses (ie, not top-posting) is somehow penalized by Microsoft (or Exchange online or Outlook online or ... ?) and was advised to stop my very proper 1990s style in-line email quoting/responding and just top-post to avoid either non-delivery or something like the body of the email not being shown ... Or something ? Does anyone know what I am referring to and can shed some light here ?
Kovah 7y ago
> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. Google's spam filter is a welcome addition. Interesting how different things are for different users. Gmails spam protection isn't working at all for me. Confirmation emails from reputable sources get into spam, while really obvious spam messages get into my inbox. I mean.. really, really obvious messages. With "dfdf" a thousand times at the end just to make the message longer. Or these porn-bitcoin-scam messages. It's ridiculous.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  I wish spam filters would automatically move all marketing/newsletters to spam
  - Andrex 7y ago
    They sort of do, if you opt into Gmail's tabs feature.
- brightball 7y ago
  I spoke to somebody the other day about highly targeted ads that come from snooping into too much private information. The lady was happy about it because it helps her find things that she likes faster. It's just interesting how perspectives differ on this type of thing.
blackhaz 7y ago
But it's not about how good the Google's ML models are, you're missing the point! It's about Google being the huge many-headed monster with tentacles. You can't use part of Google service without being entangled in their new protocols, the way they code and build things, run operating systems or servers, browse the web, and so on. You have to run your business the Google way now. The most scary part of this - the monster is completely deaf. Cry as much as you like, it's not going to listen. Even if you bring thousands of gifts to it every day, you can be erased from the web in an instant, and it won't even notice. It's not too evil (yet!) but it has so much power it's scary.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Not so much "deaf" as "huge." They're supporting the needs of a billion users with sub-50,000 engineers. Anything that effects only 1 user can't pull priority from the needs of the many. Anything that effects only 10, 100, 1000 users, etc.
josteink 7y ago
> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. Google's spam filter is a welcome addition. But you won’t know if Gmail flags legitimate email as a false positive and you will remain happy not knowing Gmail is secretly losing your emails.
jacquesm 7y ago
There is no way that Google would suddenly start to mark as spam continuations of threads that were perfectly fine between senders that have been in contact for years unless their spam filters were either seriously broken or they tweak them to cause more people to switch to gmail.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  I'm afraid you're wrong here, Jacques. When you refer to specific threads going back and forth this may be. But here's my counter example. I sent emails to my girlfriend's gmail address from my own domain hosted on a mail server run by a reputable company for years with no problem, whatsoever. Then, on vacation in Thailand, my rather elaborate trip reports for which there's really no plausible explanation that they could be spam, suddenly bounced. Sent from the same domain from which I sent mail for years and Google suddenly branded me a spammer and refused to deliver those mails even to her spam folder. The auto-reply from Google is about as useless as you would expect. There are a few links, which are neither informative nor do they help to resolve the issue. I worked around the problem by sending mails from my own Gmail account, but it left a really rotten feeling around the lines: NICE COMMUNICATION YOU HAVE GOING THERE, WOULD BE A SHAME IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO IT! So I guess your assertion is wrong. Our exchange went on for a minimum of four years. Always from the same account and suddenly I was deemed an evil spammer. It really sucks. or they tweak them to cause more people to switch to gmail. That, actually, is my suspicion. It's easy to brand that as "protecting their user base", but in reality make it so cumbersome that you're not able to send mail to a significant percentage of users over which Google controls their email unless you switch to Google for email. edit: A couple spellos and a clarification
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    You can fix your spelling errors but you still failed to properly read what you were replying to.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    To clarify it, the GP is claiming that Google is acting in bad faith, not that you are doing anything wrong.
deogeo 7y ago
> I would argue in this narrow case - I would not point to nefarious undercurrents. There are so many such 'narrow' cases, and they all just happen to work in Google's favor.
yaw100 7y ago
I don't run any spam filters at all, with widely published mail addresses. I'm getting about 2 spams per day, which doesn't really bother me.
inetknght 7y ago
> Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors. Email, even in 2019, still extremely valuable. Instead of just blocking bad actors why not work to prevent bad actors from being a problem in the first place? Oh right, it would go against their business model.
- jimmyspice 7y ago
  Can you be explicit how they would go about preventing that?
magashna 7y ago
https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2019/04/google_is_eating_our_mail/ https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2019/04/google_i... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756125 From a few months ago. Self-hosted email getting dropped for seemingly no reason.
rsync 7y ago
"As a business owner, I'm continuously having to do things so I don't end up in spam. Less images, specific wording and the list goes on." We[1] run our own mail and DNS servers and, as you might imagine, have never sent a single HTML email or any email with any kind of "element" in it, etc. Just plain, ASCII text. We've got a 15 year clean IP, perfect score on the "mail config checkers" and almost every single email we send is in response to an email from that sender. And yet ... often enough to make me anxious, we get marked as spam. [1] rsync.net
- lbriner 7y ago
  We have the same issue. Online surveys being sent as invites to 100s of 1000s of people per day and although we are good at spotting SPAMMERs setting up free accounts, obviously people will always receive an invite they might consider SPAM and we get derated. Persnally, we find Yahoo is the worst for blocking. It would be good to have a central registry of mail forwarders so that SPAM is not detected against registered IPs and then issues can be followed up directly with anyone who abuses the system. Do you really want to greylist Amazon SES because one of its users sends out spam?
  - jlgaddis 7y ago
    https://www.dnswl.org https://www.dnswl.org
  - delfinom 7y ago
    Unsolicited online surveys are always spam. I will always mark as spam with impunity.
- massaman_yams 7y ago
  Sending text-only is probably a weak spam signal as far as Gmail is concerned; for the majority of mail to the majority of recipients (though yours may be exceptions), HTML email - even if very basic - offers better layout/design options and better readability. On top of that, of very old-school users on Mutt or Pine who prefer text over HTML, I'd think a significant portion of them don't have their mail pass through Gmail's filters.
jlarocco 7y ago
> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. That's a silly way to spin this. They can keep your inbox super clean by just not delivering any mail at all. The way GMail is going, you'll soon only be able to get Google approved corporate spam using their email service. It took them longer, but they're pulling the same shit they did with XMPP. Open and standards compliant to begin with, and slowly converted to a bastardized Google only walled garden. Maybe now's the time to fix it. If people don't get an email, suggest they use a better service.
- arpa 7y ago
  Embrace, extend, extinguish? Gee, where did i hear that before?
vbezhenar 7y ago
> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. Google's spam filter is a welcome addition. Not the case for me. I'm okay with some spam. It's not hard for me to delete few mails every day. But I'm extremely not okay with legitimate mail marked as spam. And gmail keep doing that. And that means that I must check spam daily. So basically gmail spam filtering does not exist for me, because I still must read at least all subjects. And that's dozens of mails every day.
- craftinator 7y ago
  This is exactly the viewpoint I have as well. I have missed some very important emails before, such as instructions for an interview, acceptance emails, etc... They don't even show up in Gmail's search system, because it doesn't search through spam. This has forced me to look through all of the spam I get daily, examining each one to make sure I'm not missing something important. Gmail may as well not filter spam at this point.
8bitsrule 7y ago
> I can't have it both ways. I would not be on Gmail if it was like yahoo. I still use Yahoo e-mail for chit-chat (I doubt that it's less secure). Recently it started spam-boxing e-mails from a person I've corresponded with for years (without trouble). Since I have them forwarded to T-Bird, it does mean I have to visit Yahoo more often. Maybe that's the goal?

the_pwner224 7y ago

> Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors. Email, even in 2019, still extremely valuable. Google's spam models freaking suck donkey dick. I use Fastmail but my university uses Google for email. A service we use (Piazza, class Q&A) sends notifications via email. Over the years I have gotten probably about 1k email notifications from them, and replied to a few of them too. Google has recently started marking about 5% of their notifications as spam. 95% of the notifications come through; 5% get rejected. There's no discernible logic to this. There are organizations and people within the university which have me on their mailing lists; with them too 90% of the emails get through but 5% get randomly marked as spam. And they're perfectly normal emails that Google just decides to move to spam. Even with people that I have had email conversations with, it just spams random stuff. Every couple of months I check my Fastmail spam folder just for the lolz of seeing what's in there. With Google I have to check spam every day or I'll miss important stuff. There are tons of people who have posted very similar experiences on HN. On this thread I just saw another person comment that Google's own emails go to spam - I've observed this too on my personal Gmail account which I occasionally check. The spam filters have a tough job, but other companies are succeeding at keeping all the spam out without a gigantic false positive rate. Google's filter is hilariously bad.

boudin 7y ago
Yeah, gmail is really not great. I host my own email but use gmail for work. I hate everything in gmail, from the UI to the lack of really simple way to filter thing (like sieve) and to the totally random behaviour like you described. In the end, I don't really read emails on gmail anymore because it's just a huge pain. My own server has a good reputation, but it meant setting up SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc.... Where it was the most painful was with microsoft email (I don't know the name of their service now, still live maybe). By default mails goes to spam, but really quickly they goes in limbo if people don't respond (on the smtp side the email is accepted but the recipient never see it, not even in spam). On new microsoft accounts I was always able to send a few emails in spam before it went into limbo. I ended up creating ~20 different accounts on their system (it was before they enforced giving a phone number) and had random discussions with myself for a while which was enough to build a reputation and not being put in spam anymore. I don't know if this behaviour was intended or not, I try to get in touch with someone from microsoft but couldn't find a way. Since then I do strongly advise not to use their system because that makes it really unreliable.
- roblabla 7y ago
  I have exactly the same problem on my personal email server, ms silently drops my email! Their server replies with OK, but the email is nowhere to be found in the recipient’s inbox. Even if the conversation was initiated by the microsoft account and I merely reply to it, the email still disappears. I’ve got everything setup properly, all test websites come up green, and google receives my email just fine. SPF, DMARK, DKIM, PTR, HELO are all setup correctly. This isn’t an isolated problem either, the ms forums are filled with people reporting similar problems.
  - stiray 7y ago
    Same expirience here, but I must say it is becoming better since I have reverse resolve. Previously every mail went into spam. Regardless of SPF and DKIM.
  - rsync 7y ago
    "I have exactly the same problem on my personal email server, ms silently drops my email! Their server replies with OK, but the email is nowhere to be found in the recipient’s inbox." Slightly tangential ... I heard recently that "proper" in-line responses (ie, not top-posting) is somehow penalized by Microsoft (or Exchange online or Outlook online or ... ?) and was advised to stop my very proper 1990s style in-line email quoting/responding and just top-post to avoid either non-delivery or something like the body of the email not being shown ... Or something ? Does anyone know what I am referring to and can shed some light here ?

Kovah 7y ago

> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. Google's spam filter is a welcome addition. Interesting how different things are for different users. Gmails spam protection isn't working at all for me. Confirmation emails from reputable sources get into spam, while really obvious spam messages get into my inbox. I mean.. really, really obvious messages. With "dfdf" a thousand times at the end just to make the message longer. Or these porn-bitcoin-scam messages. It's ridiculous.

jdnenej 7y ago
I wish spam filters would automatically move all marketing/newsletters to spam
- Andrex 7y ago
  They sort of do, if you opt into Gmail's tabs feature.
brightball 7y ago
I spoke to somebody the other day about highly targeted ads that come from snooping into too much private information. The lady was happy about it because it helps her find things that she likes faster. It's just interesting how perspectives differ on this type of thing.

blackhaz 7y ago

But it's not about how good the Google's ML models are, you're missing the point! It's about Google being the huge many-headed monster with tentacles. You can't use part of Google service without being entangled in their new protocols, the way they code and build things, run operating systems or servers, browse the web, and so on. You have to run your business the Google way now. The most scary part of this - the monster is completely deaf. Cry as much as you like, it's not going to listen. Even if you bring thousands of gifts to it every day, you can be erased from the web in an instant, and it won't even notice. It's not too evil (yet!) but it has so much power it's scary.

shadowgovt 7y ago
Not so much "deaf" as "huge." They're supporting the needs of a billion users with sub-50,000 engineers. Anything that effects only 1 user can't pull priority from the needs of the many. Anything that effects only 10, 100, 1000 users, etc.

josteink 7y ago

> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. Google's spam filter is a welcome addition. But you won’t know if Gmail flags legitimate email as a false positive and you will remain happy not knowing Gmail is secretly losing your emails.

jacquesm 7y ago

There is no way that Google would suddenly start to mark as spam continuations of threads that were perfectly fine between senders that have been in contact for years unless their spam filters were either seriously broken or they tweak them to cause more people to switch to gmail.

CaptainZapp 7y ago
I'm afraid you're wrong here, Jacques. When you refer to specific threads going back and forth this may be. But here's my counter example. I sent emails to my girlfriend's gmail address from my own domain hosted on a mail server run by a reputable company for years with no problem, whatsoever. Then, on vacation in Thailand, my rather elaborate trip reports for which there's really no plausible explanation that they could be spam, suddenly bounced. Sent from the same domain from which I sent mail for years and Google suddenly branded me a spammer and refused to deliver those mails even to her spam folder. The auto-reply from Google is about as useless as you would expect. There are a few links, which are neither informative nor do they help to resolve the issue. I worked around the problem by sending mails from my own Gmail account, but it left a really rotten feeling around the lines: NICE COMMUNICATION YOU HAVE GOING THERE, WOULD BE A SHAME IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO IT! So I guess your assertion is wrong. Our exchange went on for a minimum of four years. Always from the same account and suddenly I was deemed an evil spammer. It really sucks. or they tweak them to cause more people to switch to gmail. That, actually, is my suspicion. It's easy to brand that as "protecting their user base", but in reality make it so cumbersome that you're not able to send mail to a significant percentage of users over which Google controls their email unless you switch to Google for email. edit: A couple spellos and a clarification
- jacquesm 7y ago
  You can fix your spelling errors but you still failed to properly read what you were replying to.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  To clarify it, the GP is claiming that Google is acting in bad faith, not that you are doing anything wrong.

deogeo 7y ago

> I would argue in this narrow case - I would not point to nefarious undercurrents. There are so many such 'narrow' cases, and they all just happen to work in Google's favor.

yaw100 7y ago

I don't run any spam filters at all, with widely published mail addresses. I'm getting about 2 spams per day, which doesn't really bother me.

inetknght 7y ago

> Google's ML mail spam models are that way because there's too many bad actors. Email, even in 2019, still extremely valuable. Instead of just blocking bad actors why not work to prevent bad actors from being a problem in the first place? Oh right, it would go against their business model.

jimmyspice 7y ago
Can you be explicit how they would go about preventing that?

magashna 7y ago

https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2019/04/google_is_eating_our_mail/ https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2019/04/google_i... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756125 From a few months ago. Self-hosted email getting dropped for seemingly no reason.

rsync 7y ago

"As a business owner, I'm continuously having to do things so I don't end up in spam. Less images, specific wording and the list goes on." We[1] run our own mail and DNS servers and, as you might imagine, have never sent a single HTML email or any email with any kind of "element" in it, etc. Just plain, ASCII text. We've got a 15 year clean IP, perfect score on the "mail config checkers" and almost every single email we send is in response to an email from that sender. And yet ... often enough to make me anxious, we get marked as spam. [1] rsync.net

lbriner 7y ago
We have the same issue. Online surveys being sent as invites to 100s of 1000s of people per day and although we are good at spotting SPAMMERs setting up free accounts, obviously people will always receive an invite they might consider SPAM and we get derated. Persnally, we find Yahoo is the worst for blocking. It would be good to have a central registry of mail forwarders so that SPAM is not detected against registered IPs and then issues can be followed up directly with anyone who abuses the system. Do you really want to greylist Amazon SES because one of its users sends out spam?
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  https://www.dnswl.org https://www.dnswl.org
- delfinom 7y ago
  Unsolicited online surveys are always spam. I will always mark as spam with impunity.
massaman_yams 7y ago
Sending text-only is probably a weak spam signal as far as Gmail is concerned; for the majority of mail to the majority of recipients (though yours may be exceptions), HTML email - even if very basic - offers better layout/design options and better readability. On top of that, of very old-school users on Mutt or Pine who prefer text over HTML, I'd think a significant portion of them don't have their mail pass through Gmail's filters.

jlarocco 7y ago

> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. That's a silly way to spin this. They can keep your inbox super clean by just not delivering any mail at all. The way GMail is going, you'll soon only be able to get Google approved corporate spam using their email service. It took them longer, but they're pulling the same shit they did with XMPP. Open and standards compliant to begin with, and slowly converted to a bastardized Google only walled garden. Maybe now's the time to fix it. If people don't get an email, suggest they use a better service.

arpa 7y ago
Embrace, extend, extinguish? Gee, where did i hear that before?

vbezhenar 7y ago

> As a gmail user, I 100% appreciate keeping my inbox extremely clean. Google's spam filter is a welcome addition. Not the case for me. I'm okay with some spam. It's not hard for me to delete few mails every day. But I'm extremely not okay with legitimate mail marked as spam. And gmail keep doing that. And that means that I must check spam daily. So basically gmail spam filtering does not exist for me, because I still must read at least all subjects. And that's dozens of mails every day.

craftinator 7y ago
This is exactly the viewpoint I have as well. I have missed some very important emails before, such as instructions for an interview, acceptance emails, etc... They don't even show up in Gmail's search system, because it doesn't search through spam. This has forced me to look through all of the spam I get daily, examining each one to make sure I'm not missing something important. Gmail may as well not filter spam at this point.

8bitsrule 7y ago

> I can't have it both ways. I would not be on Gmail if it was like yahoo. I still use Yahoo e-mail for chit-chat (I doubt that it's less secure). Recently it started spam-boxing e-mails from a person I've corresponded with for years (without trouble). Since I have them forwarded to T-Bird, it does mean I have to visit Yahoo more often. Maybe that's the goal?